Winter Solstice 2021

 

ANOTHER YEAR - BE OF GOOD CHEER— THE RETURN OF THE LIGHT!

Third Fig

Edna was blessed with two figs: 

Searing light of inspiration and 

delicate balance of temporal home. 

I feel gluttonous claiming 

a third fig just for 

it's tempting taste.

(In homage to Edna St. Vincent Millay)

https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/millay/figs/figs.html

I am thinking of staging an art exhibit of my paintings and artist books in January at my home. If you are interested in attending please let me know.

  

Untitled — MixedMedia on Paper

October 2021 — 11” x 14” each

Ruth Ann Howden 

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I’ve read a lot this year, and I want to share a few notes from books that gave me hope.

This is not a passive hope that someone will save us, but hope for our being active together.

Timefullness by Marcia Bjornerud, (2020) I wrote about this book earlier this year, and I keep thinking about her incredibly long-range view of time/geological scale I know we would be acting far different if we could get free of our quarterly-profit mode of thinking. A shift in perspective. . .

Hope by Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams (2021)

A survival guide for trying times is an easy read, well written in an interview format, listing four reasons for hope: 

1. the amazing human intellect. 
2. the resilience of nature. 
3. the power of young people. 
4. the indomitable human spirit.

What we nurture and encourage wins. A reminder of how much our words matter, even when we don’t know it; that hope is a socialist gift.

Radical Hope edited by Carolina De Roberts (2017)

“letters of love and dissent in dangerous times.” I liked how book was divided into roots, branches and seeds. Various authors writing about the time when #45 came to power based on racism, yet finding hope in indomitable human spirit. Horrendous stories of immigration and harsh reality of trying to make it in United States. Luis Alberto Urrea quotes Neil Cassidy as writing to Jack Kerouac, “Grace beats karma.” Katie Kitamura on distrusting certitude: “I need to believe in the value of the doubt I now feel, in its ability to create a space for the slowness of thought and conviction. I need to believe in it, not least because it promotes thinking before acting – – and if there is one thing we know about the president elect, is that he acts before he thinks.” And Celeste Ng’s family motto “ be kind, be curious, be helpful.” Goal is to be open always. Cristina Garcia, “ I hope technology isn’t holding you hostage the way it does so many of us today, fracturing concentration, keeping us neglectful of those we love, surrendering our time to eat empty seductions.” 

Saving Us by Katharine Hayhoe  (2021)

A climate scientist’s case for hope and healing in a divided world. Mostly she is talking about interpersonal connecting with values to establish understanding and trust. Individuals do not make much impact, except with their words and by banning together for action.

Feline Philosophy by John Gray (2020) — I am not a cat person, can’t explain why I read this, but yes it was enjoyable and thought provoking. “Human beings chase power in order to give themselves a sense of escaping death,… cats accept life as a gift. Humans are different. Unlike other animals, they are ready to die for their beliefs. Monotheists and rationalists regard this as a mark of our superiority. It shows we live for the sake of ideas, not just instinctual satisfaction. But if humans are unique in dying for ideas, they are also alone in killing for them. Killing and dying for nonsensical ideas is how many human beings have made sense of their lives.”

The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich (2020)

A novel based on her grandfather who successfully fought the US Government in 1954 to prevent their tribe’s termination.

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hopeful haiku

Reimagine hope -

proceed by questioning all. 

It’s still possible

Words

Language is our super power. yet

We toss out words carelessly, 

they can explode with sweetness, or fury. 

Words can console or cancel,

then regroup into exquisite bouquets. 

I* want to spread words like seeds and rose petals 

toward a future of good cheer. 

Examine and question

Read aloud, what do they say now, and now?

Listen 

(*I am not a robot)

Index

 Updated December, 2022

paintings:

hula II -- fall 2022

entangled series -- fall 2022

entanglement — summer 2022

Two untitled black & white — winter 2021

Falling Out of Touch — fall 2021

Chaos — summer 2021

Hula -- winter 2020

Mo‘o — summer 2020

the good enough life — fall 2019

intersection — fall 2018

aporia — fall 2018

Kupeke fish pond — summer 2018

abstract palm — August 2016

clementine — winter 2015

sea turtle — summer 2014

yin/yang Lino print — spring 2014

five palm paintings — April 2013

proposed palm poster — winter 2012

haiku: 

Reflection --winter 2022

A gift --- winter 2022

Gifts -- fall 2022

Butterflies — summer 2022

Hopeful — winter 2021

Timefullness — fall 2021

(past/future) — fall 2021

Chaos — summer 2021

October -- Winter 2020

Expectations — Fall 2020

COVID-19, plus three more — summer 2020

change — spring 2020

harvest — winter 2019

connect — winter 2019

my good enough life — fall 2019

bonus — summer 2019

new year, plus ten more — spring 2018

1000 year old friend, plus eight more — fall 2016

whales — summer 2016

winter — winter 2015

paradise — winter 2014

what if — winter 2014

poems:

Ode to My Pain -- fall 2022

Mt. Repose -- fall 2022

Word Salad — summer 2022

Breaking Bread — summer 2022

Watching the Mountain — summer 2022

maybe ruth ann — spring 2022

Abundance — spring 2022

Third Fig — winter 2021

Words — winter 2021

Awkward, awkwardly, awkwardness— fall 2021

Eclipse of Flower Moon — Summer 2021

Writer Aerobics — Spring 2021

Arrival — Spring 2021

Today — Spring 2021

(With eight sunrise photos taken off Kaunakakai Wharf)

Epistemic Poetry 101 — Spring 2021

Emily Dickinson & Joy Harjo -- Winter 2020

Expectations— Fall 2020

Poet’s Job Description — summer 2020

AOD (Adventure of the Day) — summer 2020

May — spring 2020

No Way — spring 2020

madness — fall 2019

head is colorful cocoon — summer 2019

consistent c —spring 2019

moving nouns — spring 2019

artist of intent — winter 2018

vertigo — winter 2018

binary paths — winter 2018

fragile — fall 2018

vast — summer 2018

O 2 K — summer 2018

return to central pacific — fall 2017

perpetual summer — summer 2017

ode to central pacific —spring 2017

persistence— January 2017

stories:

S.G. — fall 2019

world on a whim — summer 2015

travel blog — 2012 - 2013

art work from 1990’s and first decade of this century:

https://members.efn.org/~rah/index.html

art by Ruth Ann Howden

Instagram/social media:

#rahowden

Fall Equinox 2021

 

Untitled - Falling Out of Touch

Mixed Media on Paper

August 2021 10” x 24”

Ruth Ann Howden

Awkward, awkwardly, awkwardness 

I feel indecisive, going in circles

I tell myself not to judge

Not to label

I say let it be, just pay attention 

In the great arc of time 

I aspire to be a mosquito

The one who gets but never gives, may last a long time, but never lives.

Maxim framed on wall of my childhood home

As an act of atonement I have slowed down, paying attention to my impact on the environment, and creating with the belief that art is an act of giving back/restitution.

The time for giving back is now. 

My proposal for national restitution that could be implemented immediately: Transform the 800+ military bases the United States has spread around the globe into refugee centers.

Our military industrial complex has proved to be the disaster that was forecast by President Eisenhower. The U.S. military (the world’s largest consumer of petroleum products)  has caused vast devastation and suffering throughout the world. All for profit. We can chose to stop, take that infrastructure and turn these facilities into life-giving action.

Timefullness* Puts World into Perspective

Look, time vanishes 

with all our urgent concerns 

while the rocks persist

* Timefullness by Geologist Marcia Bjornerud, published 2020

“The great irony of the Anthropocene is that our outsized effects on the planet has in fact put Nature firmly back in charge“

“As members of a technological society that can keep Nature at arms length most of the time, we have an almost autistic relationship with the earth. We are rigid in our ways, savants when it comes to certain narrow obsessions, but dysfunctional in other regards, because we wrongly view ourselves as separate from the rest of the natural world. Convinced that nature is some thing outside us, a mute and immutable thing external to us, but the earth is speaking to us all the time… We need to start thinking like a mountain, awake to all the habits and inhabitants of this ancient, complicated, endlessly evolving planet.”

Random thoughts

Deadline approaching

I used to say deadlines are my friends as they prompted me to get things done — things I felt were important and gave me pleasure both in the doing and in the completion. Now I do what I can, when I can, following the advice of the Oregon poet laureate, William Stafford, who when asked about writer’s block said, “I lower my standards.”

Choice

We’re all alive without our choice. No one has a say over the family we’re born into, nor our gender, race, nation, era. And as for particular talents, interests, physical or mental ability —it’s all a crapshoot. Our personal choices are insignificant, but our choices collectively can be astounding.

Giving Up

Giving up can be like paying forward. Giving up meat so the land can feed more people. Giving up driving and flying so we can have clean air. Giving up military bases so refugees can be housed. Giving up defense contracts so we can have universal education and health care.

“Up on my toes.” There was a girl in my kindergarten class who would start her stories that way. I think her name was Sylvia, but probably am just guessing at that. However, I recall her lanky stature, her mixed-race uniqueness in East Los Angeles (the third largest Mexican population at that time after Mexico City and Guadalajara. I wonder if that distinction has changed in the 50 plus years since I worked at Malabar School, in Boyle Heights.) 

Up on my toes is a wonderful phrase. It says pay attention, I have something to tell you. It also reflects back on advice to keep on your toes, as in danger, be ready to pivot, dodge, duck, change course. A reminder that you have choices besides standing like a deer in the headlights waiting to get hit. 

Up on my toes. A superpower I never achieved, but like to believe that Sylvia perfected it.

I had the pleasure of a vacation on Kauai’s lovely beaches with family in August

Photo by Vashti Ferretti

Back home. Life is good on Molokai (back to boring, boring is good)

The curlew and kolea have returned from Alaska, next will be the whales.

my past ties into 

your future with words to be 

recited aloud

Summer Solstice 2021

 all change brings chaos

reweaving reality

with fateful choices

Untitled (Chaos) by Ruth Ann Howden 

June 2021

Mixed Media on Paper 24” h x 28” w

My painting of chaos seemed to beg a dramatic red slash, or an explosive orange fireball, but chaos is an everyday occurrence, it goes on and on, and on. This image reflects that wearing down, the rusting out and clogging up of systems; while the life force keeps picking up and repurposing the debris. Finding an overall unity, a balance, the yin/yang. It just is. A slow deep tide rising and falling, stirring. 

My question is: Why does that give me hope?

Eclipse of the Flower Moon

The flower moon is setting

over the elementary school

Far to the south as the sun heads north.

Full, suspended, dominating imagination 

extending through the night —

An exceedingly long eclipse holds me.

Rising as a blood moon

Rising as a super moon

A blatant “look at me!” flower moon.

The first bite of a slow devouring

Demands I set alarm to view

Totality.

Obedient to celestial schedule

I rose and went out

Situated my plastic chair on the lawn and

Shared most of an hour feeling

the reality of, the physical

presence of, our only moon

swathed in my shadow.

Feeling the pull that rules the tides

( tides - the only natural phenomenon that

Man hasn’t fu****-up, yet. No, not true

king tides flood basements of Waikiki hotels) 

Yet, tonight a peaceful reminder of cycles

That bring health and renewal.

Now the flower moon is setting 

and I embrace another day

Best started with a poem.

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      In loving memory of my dear friend
          Carolyn Pryor  (1934 - 2021)

Spring Equinox 2021

 

This rainbow greeted me at dawn on the first day of the year — 01012021

O After I read Shakespeare in a Divided America by James Schapiro — Analysis of Shakespeare Plays in America, published 2020; I came across a brilliant piece by Elizabeth Winkler, Was Shakespeare a Woman?, From the Atlantic, collected in The Best American Essays 2020, André Aciman editor

Hers was the last essay in the book, only because of alphabetical placement by author’s last name, but it was the most uplifting and positive way to end the collection. Winkler presents excellent evidence that Shakespeare did not write the plays but was a con-man. Attribution is given to Amelia Bassano Lanker, born in London in 1569 to a family of Venetian immigrants -– musicians and instrument makers who were likely Jewish – – she was one of the first women in England to publish a volume of poetry, “ suitably religious yet startlingly feminist, arguing for women's liberty and against male oppression.”

It really pleased to me to consider that title; it certainly seems possible.

My New Year’s Resolution is to ask a beautiful questions. What if?

Somehow that all fits in with Amanda Gorman’s inspiring inaugural day address.

“Now more than ever, the United States needs an inaugural poem,” Gorman said. “Poetry is typically the touchstone that we go back to when we have to remind ourselves of the history that we stand on, and the future that we stand for.”

Hearing her (and lots of other young voices online) gives me hope for a future. The human possibilities/imaginations give greater hope than technologies to straighten out the mess we have caused. Art saves lives.

I realize I want my art to be ‘perfect’, but am not patient enough to achieve it. My life seems to continually spiral back into itself, back to repetition, back to art, it is all good.

Here’s some of my recent/imperfect poetry:

Writer Aerobics

Perhaps 

maybe 

we’ll see 

it might be possible 

under consideration

can’t decide 

rewrite 

try again

Again

Arrival

What are the semantics of place

Return

Agency

Questions – – 

Haunting loops

an in-betweenness balancing act

my words are placeholders

finding own sense in color and rhythm

I will know

When we get there

Today

We might agree this is today

but I'm not sure 

yesterday and someday are lost

the feeling of Monday is certainly gone

Monday was full of expectation, energy

Another day came and left

this day or that day

having only the now, and forced

meditation on impermanence

Epistemic Poetry 101

1

Birth — we begin

Mimicking the language(s) heard

using those words to gather more words

A web commences like

Escher’s hand drawing a hand.

Off we go, out and in —

macro leaps of ideas, micro dives into reason

All without knowing ourselves or how we fit in

And the magical part is, we don’t need to know

for it all to knit together 

into family and community

each adding to the pattern — the swirl of life

2

Gathering knowledge, sharing, coming to agreements

how we live together.

We agree to drive on the right side of the road

or the left, it is arbitrary, but life assuring

Leaving home in the morning, rounding

the necessary bases of daily life,

confident of returning home 

bound in web of traffic agreements

Agreements are fluid, change continual 

Freeways, super-stores, trade deals pushed through 

with lives bypassed/discounted

Notions of exceptionalism disguise, disregard

How can I not feel responsible

recognizing the global destruction 

overwhelming collateral damage —

We could agree to do no harm

3

My clicks through the ether are tracked by systems I cannot comprehend

our patterns of searching, posting, following, have value —

how do we share that wealth, who really owns it?

What else could be done with it?

What can I know about me?

What is known about me?

Who decided, who could decide 

who profits from all that information?

4

Life has been defined as “a self-sustained 

chemical system that is

capable of Darwinian evolution.”

But that tells me nothing about my life

Self-reflection — absurd attempts at seeing myself

in the past-future, in a future-past, in the slippery-now

As I use my memory, it changes

Let the masks fall — I was, once never / I will, forever no longer be

Living with contradictions and constant possibilities 

a life-game we play alone/together

Let’s make it a loving, playful game

5

My task is to unmask myself, hold my roiling 

contradictions up for all to say, ‘see, that’s who she is’ 

Perhaps if I were to step outside of myself —

but again like an Escher drawing, the exit leads back inside

Drawing my words adds to the texture of life’s web 

creating unique paths, new connections, solid anchors

In this tangled mess, looping through time 

is there another me who sprinted off on a different path

But she would be someone else, and 

would we even recognize each other?

Or did my choices throw that draft away 

leaving me to carry on - often unsure, hesitant

But sometimes delightedly dancing on

— on a high of ideas and possibilities

Compulsively playing, replaying, this  life-game with

self-modifying rules and unknown perimeters

Choices skewed by illusions of

free will, entitlement, exceptionalism

Yet, amazingly, I know I am alive

that much knowledge is enough

It took four years, but my first plumeria bloom is perfect, the scent pure pleasure